Mass grave scoured

LINDEN - An ongoing search for the remains of murder victims long ago dumped into a Linden well along Flood Road has so far yielded about 1,000 bone and skull fragments, officials said Tuesday.

Scott Smith

LINDEN - An ongoing search for the remains of murder victims long ago dumped into a Linden well along Flood Road has so far yielded about 1,000 bone and skull fragments, officials said Tuesday.

Information convicted serial killer Wesley Shermantine, 45, has provided - already leading to multiple discoveries - has caused him problems in prison, he said in an angrily worded letter to The Record.

Investigators won't venture to say how many missing people Shermantine's tips may ultimately reveal. The tedious work of sifting soil scooped up from the 19th century well is far from complete.

Fifty people have called a hot line set up for those who believe a loved one fell victim to Shermantine and Loren Herzog, who hanged himself last month. The two Linden men led a two-decade killing spree until their March 1999 arrests.

An excavator dredging down to 45 feet so far has yet to reach the well's bottom or strike water. Monday's rain suspended digging, but it could resume today. Sifting small piles resumed Tuesday under sunny skies.

The search team also believes a second well about a quarter-mile east of this one may hold yet more remains, officials said.

"This is the most gruesome crime scene I've been involved with," said Deputy Les Garcia, a 30-year veteran of police work and a spokesman for the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office.

In addition to the bones, the digging has pulled out clothes, shoes, a purse and a ring engraved with initials. About 20 searchers are at work from the Sheriff's Office and the state Department of Justice. They expect to be there for days or weeks.

Also Tuesday, a forensic odontologist made the preliminary identification of Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler, whose remains were unearthed Friday from a Calaveras County hillside.

Paula Wheeler, the mother of the 16-year-old Franklin High School girl who vanished in 1985, said she and her husband, Raymond, are planning a return trip to Stockton later this month for a memorial service.

"I'm kind of numb," said Wheeler, who had received a call with the news directly from Sheriff Steve Moore. The Wheelers now live in Crossville, Tenn.

Years of searching for missing victims of Shermantine and Herzog made a breakthrough Feb. 9, when the remains of Cyndi Vanderheiden were recovered off Leonard Road in remote Calaveras County.

Crudely drawn maps and directions Shermantine sent The Record and others from his death row cell led the searchers to Vanderheiden, a Clements woman abducted and murdered at age 25 in 1998 by the two killers.

On Friday, they found Chevy Wheeler's remains. While both of those victims have been tentatively identified, investigators won't call it official until they have the results of DNA tests. Paula Wheeler said officials expect that in another seven to 10 days.

An anthropologist has begun the job of piecing together hundreds of bones in an attempt to return the correct remains to their families, Garcia said.

The field work continues. There are three old wells in the vicinity east of Linden. Searchers said they have found no evidence of burns on remains found in the well that is currently being searched.

A letter from Shermantine, who maintains he never killed anybody, said Herzog one day poured gas into a well and lit it on fire in an attempt to destroy the evidence of his crimes.

In a tersely worded letter dated Feb. 4, Shermantine said information The Record made public about a potential crime has put his life on death row in peril.

Shermantine had sent a missing-person flier for 9-year-old Michaela Joy Garecht, who was abducted in 1988 from Hayward. The flier includes a sketch of her abductor, which resembles a mug shot of Herzog.

Shermantine wrote that Herzog had relatives in Castro Valley, near Hayward. Herzog at the time was 22.

"I want you to look at this sketch, then at Herzog's photo," he wrote. "Then the timing and Herzog's age. It all fits."

Publication of that information provided by Shermantine - implicating Herzog - has turned other prisoners against him, he said.

Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said she could not confirm or deny reports that Shermantine had been placed in protective custody or under suicide watch. That information is protected under federal privacy laws, she said.

Thornton said Shermantine remains in San Quentin State Prison's East Block, which houses the bulk of California's 728 condemned inmates.